Tagged with “australia”
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It’s Australia’s single most important piece of environmental legislation. But now, the government is preparing to revamp the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and drag it into the 21st Century. Which is fine with some environmental activists, who have welcomed the government’s decision to accept many of the 71 recommendations for change put forward by a 2009 review of the Act. It may also be fine for endangered species, which will now escape the often contradictory state-based systems of categorisation; not to mention migratory birds, which will fly into some federal protection. But the controversial part of the proposed reforms lies in changes to the system for approving (or knocking back) development proposals on environmental grounds. The Commonwealth wants to end the piecemeal approach of the current system in favour of a regional, ‘strategic’ mechanism which will take into account the broader environmental impact. But it means getting state and territory governments in on the Act—and not everyone likes that idea.

About 500 heavy polluting companies will pay a $23 per tonne carbon price from July 1 next year, under a plan unveiled by Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Affected businesses and workers will be helped, with $9.2 billion worth of assistance over three years. Low income households will also be compensated with a rise in the tax free threshold, from $6,000 to $18,000, and up to $338 per year extra for single pensioners. But will be compensation be enough and will the carbon price be effective in cutting Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions?

This debate is, to say the least, timely. Perhaps at no other time in our recent history has the role of parties, their ‘inner’ workings and the power of apparatchiks been so under the spotlight. It used to be that politics was a matter of principle, where the major parties were committed to political ideals and the public good…but were they really?